“How Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth”
Written by Russell Bates & David Wise
Directed by Bill Reed
Animated Season 2, Episode 5
Production episode 22022
Original air date: October 5, 1974
Stardate: 6063.4
Captain’s log. A probe scanned Earth and then self-destructed. It left a disruption trail that the Enterprise can track, and they do so, eventually finding a ship on the same course as the probe. The ship is twice the size of the Enterprise, it’s surrounded by a huge energy field, and it’s made of crystalline ceramic. The alien ship surrounds the Enterprise with a force globe that traps them, even though they were travelling at warp when they were surrounded by it.
The ship then hits the Enterprise with some kind of beam. Kirk orders phasers to be fired, which stops the beam from hitting them, but they’re still trapped and still being probed.
Then the ship’s energy field changes shape, and the ship now appears to resemble a serpent-like being, which Ensign Dawson Walking Bear at the helm recognizes as Kukulkan, a Mayan deity.
Only then does the ship communicate, expressing gratitude that someone on the Enterprise remembers the deity, who then transports Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Walking Bear over to the other ship. Walking Bear says that legend has it that Kukulkan went away and would some day return. It seems the probe was that return…
The ship becomes a re-creation of an ancient city of some sort. Kukulkan instructs them to learn the purpose of the seeds he had previously sown on Earth. The landing party recognizes bits from many Earth cultures. Walking Bear explains that Kukulkan told the Mayans to build a city according to the calendar he provided them, and when they finished it, he would return.
Kirk theorizes that Kukulkan went to several civilizations on Earth and gave them instructions on how to build his city, and he never returned because nobody got it completely right.
There’s a pyramid at the center of the city. Kirk climbs up its huge staircase, while McCoy, Scotty, and Walking Bear stay on the ground surrounding the pyramid. Walking Bear realizes there are three serpent-head statues at the four corners of the pyramid, and Kirk finds a piece of stained glass on top. Kirk instructs the others to turn the serpent heads toward the pyramid, at which point they catch the sun’s rays and reflect them onto the stained glass. When all four beams hit the glass, there’s an explosion of color, and a winged serpent appears. This is Kukulkan, daring them to use their weapons on him—they must hate him because they fired on him. Kirk assures him that they don’t hate him, they were just defending themselves after he fired first. Kukulkan archly points out that he’s their master and he can do what he wants. Okay, then.
Kukulkan then transports them to what looks like a zoo. Each creature is in a cage but is mentally in their natural habitat. It turns out the landing party was as well. Kukulkan explains that he is the last of his species. He went to Earth to teach them peace, hoping that they would construct his city properly and summon him. They never did, so he sent the probe, finally, and found what he deems a savage, warlike race.
On the Enterprise, Spock figures out how to escape the globe, and the Enterprise is free. Which is handy, as that action distracts Kukulkan from trying to kill the landing party. While he’s distracted, McCoy suggests freeing the Capellan power-cat that Kukulkan has captured—those animals, which give off an electric charge, hate captivity, and if it realizes it’s caged, it’ll run rampant.
That’s precisely what happens. Kukulkan is livid, more so when the Enterprise fires on Kukulkan’s ship, damaging it. The power-cat moves to attack Kukulkan, and Kirk uses one of McCoy’s hypos to tranquilize the animal.
Kirk speechifies to Kukulkan, and convinces him that humanity doesn’t need his help anymore, and that progress is better accomplished naturally than when being led by the nose. Kukulkan agrees and lets the quartet go.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Spock discovers that the globe Kukulkan uses is only elastic in one direction at a time, so he uses the physical push of the Enterprise and the pull of the tractor beam to shatter it.
Fascinating. When asked by McCoy if Vulcan was ever visited by aliens like Kukulkan, Spock says that they were, and the aliens came away from the experience much wiser.
I’m a doctor, not an escalator. The day is saved by McCoy, who recognizes the Capellan power-cat (no doubt from when he was stationed on that world) and also provides the tranq that keeps the cat from zapping Kukulkan.
Hailing frequencies open. Uhura expresses concern over why Spock isn’t trying to locate the landing party, and Spock snottily points out that he needs to focus on getting the Enterprise free, and why isn’t Uhura monitoring the alien ship like he asked? (Lovers‘ spat, maybe?)
Ahead warp one, aye. No Sulu in this one so we can have Walking Bear as the helmsman.
I cannot change the laws of physics! The sum total of Scotty’s contribution to this episode is to figure out that you can turn the heads of the statues.
Forewarned is three-armed. The sum total of Arex’s contribution to this episode is to turn on the viewscreen once.
Channel open.
“You don’t deserve it, Yeoman, but you’re getting a few days’ bed rest.”
–McCoy showing off his bedside manner right before Kukulkan kidnaps him.
Welcome aboard. The only extra voices beyond the big three are Nichelle Nichols as Uhura and James Doohan as everyone else: Scotty, Arex, Walking Bear, and Kukulkan.
Trivial matters: The episode’s title derives from Shakespeare, specifically King Lear: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child—Away, away!” Kirk and McCoy quote the line at the episode’s end.
Nobody told William Shatner how to pronounce “Kukulkan,” and since the actors didn’t all record their dialogue together, he pronounces it differently than everyone else. (Then again, that happened with DeForest Kelley several times on the live-action series, and he was in the same room as everyone…)
The Capellan power-cat presumably comes from the same world that we saw in “Friday’s Child.” McCoy was established as having once been assigned to Capella in that episode, and he’s the one who recognizes the animal.
Walking Bear appears in the novels The Fire and the Rose and Allegiance in Exile, both by David R. George III.
Co-writer Russell Bates is Kiowa, and while he pitched several stories to the animated series, D.C. Fontana didn’t go for any of them, instead asking him to pitch something that made use of his Native heritage.
Gene L. Coon, the show-runner for the second half of season one and the first half of season two of the live-action series, had died in 1973, and he and Bates were close friends and colleagues. Bates patterned the story after “Who Mourns for Adonais?” as a tribute to Coon.
To boldly go. “Intelligent life is too precious a thing to be led by the nose.” I want to love this episode a lot more than I actually do. But I do like it a lot.
My main source of adoration is that we get the gods-were-really-aliens trope, but it isn’t a god from Europe or North Africa, as is often the default in such tales. The only deities even mentioned in the episode, beyond Kukulkan, are Quetzalcoatl and the dragons of Asian myth.
My main issue, unfortunately, is yet another use of the gods-were-really-aliens trope. Yes, co-writer Bates patterned the story after “Who Mourns for Adonais?” as a tribute, but the line between tribute and copy is a bit fuzzy here, and Bates and Wise dance on both side of it quite a lot.
I do find it hilarious that a 1973 kids show is more willing to give us a Native character and actually identify his nationality (Comanche), something a 1995 live-action spinoff of this show couldn’t manage. And just in general, I like Walking Bear as a character, even though his primary function is to provide exposition. But his secondary function is the same as that of Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov: it ain’t just white folks who have gone out into space.
Still, the story itself is pretty standard. I find it particularly hard to swallow that the whole reason why Kukulkan never came back after providing his “gift” is because it never occurred to anyone to rotate a few statues? I guess? I dunno, it’s kind of weirdly specific, and by itself isn’t really much of a sign that you’re a maturing civilization. Or that you’re dedicated to your god, for that matter.
I will give James Doohan credit on this one, his voice work is excellent. Walking Bear, Scotty, Arex, and Kukulkan all have distinctive voices. In addition, William Shatner’s work is much improved. His speech to Kukulkan is delivered with much more passion than the actor was able to arse up earlier in the animated run.
On the one hand, this is a total retread of “Who Mourns for Adonais?” On the other hand, we get a cool flying serpent instead of Michael Forest in a shiny toga, which is trading up.
Ultimately, while I have to ding the episode for repetition of a very old theme, I love the look at non-white religious traditions. It’s nice to see the alien species actually checking out the humans in pre-colonial America and Asia for a change…
Warp factor rating: 7
Next week: “The Counter-Clock Incident”
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be at Zenkaikon 2017 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania this weekend, alongside fellow author Charles Dunbar; actors Steve Blum, John Patrick Lowrie, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, Ellen McLain, and Sonny Strait; performers Cosplay Burlesque, Cosplay Pro Wrestling, the Slants, Uncle Yo, and Greg Wicker; and cultural presenter Kuniko Kanawa. His schedule can be found here.
I never got why Walking Bear would know about Mayan gods just because he’s a native american. Sounds kinda racist.
ragnarredbeard: He said right there in the episode that this was a hobby of his: “I’ve studied the histories of many ancient Earth peoples.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It’s irritating that this is the only TV mention of Walking Bear. How hard would it have been to name drop the guy ONCE in Voyager? You don’t even have to say that Chakotay is the same tribe, just allude to the guy’s existence for crying out loud. Of course, that would require remembering TAS exists.
Kukulkan was too garish for my taste. Was the colorblind guy in charge again?
I disagree, Keith — this is a very problematical episode. In theory, it was nice to see an episode written by a Native American author and drawing on his culture, but in practice, it was a pretty gross misrepresentation of many indigenous cultures, warping their chronology to claim they had a common origin, and devaluing them by not only attributing their civilizations to aliens instead of their own capabilities, but saying they got it all wrong. I’m also not sure how accurate its portrayal of Kukulkan was, although it’s basically true that he was seen as a creator deity and teacher of civilization, though sources disagree on whether it was he or Itzamna who was mythologically credited with creating the Maya calendar. I only found one online reference to Kukulkan leaving and promising to return, but it didn’t look like a very reputable site.
And Ensign Walking Bear is a pretty lousy attempt at representation. Not only is he nothing more than a mouthpiece for Native American tradition, with no other personality beyond that (although at least he isn’t an expert tracker like most ’70s Native American TV characters), but the script treats all Native Americans as interchangeable. Why would a Comanche, from the Great Plains, consider the Maya, from Central America, to be part of his cultural heritage? That’s like Chekov considering, ohh, Italians to be part of his heritage. Worse, since at least Russian and Italian are from the same language family.
And really, how could a pyramid built by ancient technology and powered by mere sunlight have the ability to send a faster-than-light transmission to Kukulkan? That part makes no sense at all.
I’ll grant, though, that it’s visually impressive. The hologram around Kukulkan’s ship is gorgeous, the ship itself is a neat design, and the city is a visually interesting setting even if the underlying idea is dumb as hell. And I like that it’s even more blatant in its secular-humanist “We don’t need gods anymore” message than “Adonais” was (with its “We find the one sufficient” copout).
But Shatner constantly saying “Kukla Khan” was hilarious. I kept expecting him to add “…and Ollie.”
Hmm…
In “Serpent’s Tooth” did Kukla Khan
A stately pyramid bequest:
Where Kirk, the stalwart captain, ran
Up stairways measureless to man
All for an IQ test.
Neat looking kite.
I’m a crazy cat lady who cosplays a Capellan Warrior and am so excited to learn about power-cats. How could I have missed this?!
Christopher: As I said upthread, Walking Bear said he was a student of “many” (his exact word) ancient Earth peoples. I don’t see any problem with it, nor do I see it as any more warping than pretty much every other gods-are-really-aliens story.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
For reasons surpassing understanding, Alan Dean Foster’s adaptation called it the “Capalent power cat.”
I don’t see why that would be more absurd than an American considering Rome to be a part of his heritage. Or Greece. Would you really think it absurd that an American should know much of civilizations that were, after all, located on an entirely different continent?
@9/ad: It’s not about plausibility, it’s about understanding cultural differences. The point is, Chekov prides himself on his Russian heritage. He’d be insulted if someone mistook him for an Italian or a German, just as Scotty would be if someone thought he was, say, English or Welsh. (“Welshie! No!!!!”) Heritages are not interchangeable.
The problem is that it’s a European bias to assume that all “Indians” are a single civilization. They’re actually hundreds of distinct cultures and nations. A white writer or viewer would automatically jump to the conclusion that a Native American would see every other Native American as part of his own culture, but that’s because “Native American” is a European construct subsuming what are actually many very distinct civilizations and traditions. So a member of one of those cultures would not automatically see another one of those cultures as “my heritage.” I think that, in general, members of indigenous cultures prefer to be referred to by their own nationality instead of seeing their individual culture identity erased, just as Scotty and Chekov would want to be defined by their individual cultures rather than treated as generic Europeans. Sure, a Comanche could know Maya culture, and a Russian could consider Rome part of his heritage, but it would be wrong to expect it as a given, because they’re not the same culture. And if someone were writing a Trek episode that depended on a character knowing about Russian history, they’d probably give that role to Chekov instead of McCoy, say. (Although they’d give it to Spock if it were the third season.)
And it would’ve been easy enough to avoid the problem. There’s a widespread myth that the Maya are an extinct people, but that’s dead wrong; their civilization fell, but the Maya ethnic group and culture still thrives in Central America and makes up 40% of the population of Guatemala. So if the episode needed a character whose heritage made him familiar with Kukulkan, why not make him someone with actual Maya heritage instead of a Comanche? Treating them as casually interchangeable is just as bad as Voyager‘s approach of inventing a generic fake Native American culture for Chakotay.
As someone of partial Native American descent, I’ll say I do feel some common kinship with other tribes, even those in South America that are wildly different from my own (Cherokee). In any event, it hasn’t stopped me from finding interested in their mythology. But then I find all mythology interesting.
So is it ‘racist’ or ‘problematical’ for me personally? Not really. Though I struggle with those words: ‘racist’ and ‘problematical.’ I see them used so often in criticism they’ve lost almost all meaning for me.
So basically, Star Trek happens in an alternate universe where Erich von Daniken was not, in fact, just full of BS.
Ooh, I get to jump on my historian soapbox! I will try to keep it short. :)
See, the thing about minority studies, is that it’s new. Ethnic and cultural studies as an academic field didn’t even exist until around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, and various cultural groups have developed their own academic fields even more recently. I have a BA in Deaf Studies, an academic field that didn’t exist until about 30 years ago. Native American Studies first appears as an academic field in 1970 – only one year after the first accredited Women’s Studies courses.
Now, without getting into Gerda Lerner’s stages of minority studies, it’s still pretty obvious that if scholars weren’t talking about Native American Studies until 1974, pretty much nobody else was either. Nobody was thinking about appropriate representation or the nuances of subgroups within the larger cultural group. Of course, Russians and Scots are far better known to the white people writing these stories, so they get more complex depictions – but nobody knows enough about Native Americans as a whole to provide a complex depiction, because scholars haven’t looked at it that way yet. Russell Bates is Kiowa, but when he wrote this he had only two choices: a Mary Sue, or a random Native American guy from [insert tribe here], because there wasn’t the societal knowledge at the time for him to depict anything else.
I know this is hard to swallow for many people – “how can somebody not know about a culture, especially one related to their own” – but it’s a case of historical relativism. It’s easy for us to apply what we know now to writers in the past, but they didn’t have the academic and societal framework on which to write anything but Walking Bear. Today, of course, we’d do something very different. But back then you got “Hey, we put a Native American guy on the screen! Yay!” (Okay, this is actually Lerner’s first stage, “compensatory” representation.) Criticizing the episode for not doing Native Americans “right” ignores the time period in which the story was written – and in 1974, this type of representation was pretty damn laudable.
Ahem. That was not short. Sorry! *steps off soapbox*
@MeredithP:
Not short, but it was interesting. Thank you! :)
@13/Meredith: I’m not ignoring the time period; after all, I was the target audience of this and other Filmation shows when they were first made, and they did a lot to shape my progressive and inclusive values, and I appreciate them for that. But I’ve grown from those childish beginnings, and as you say, so has society’s understanding of the issues involved. So I’m not saying it wasn’t progressive for the time; I’m saying it hasn’t aged well at all. Just like TOS’s attempts at feminism have aged very badly because we’ve come so far beyond them now.
And it’s not just this episode. It was cool when Filmation included Brian Tochi as a series regular in Space Academy, a victory for Asian inclusion, but in retrospect, the fact that his sole defining trait was martial arts expertise is a huge stereotype. There was also a Native American regular in TAS’s contemporary show Lassie’s Rescue Rangers, and he was your pretty standard “wise Indian” with great tracking skills and knowledge of nature. Although I think Filmation did do a better job with Native American representation in later shows. Tonto in The New Adventures of the Lone Ranger was pretty non-stereotyped and portrayed as an equal partner to the Ranger rather than just a sidekick. And then there’s BraveStarr, in which the space-cowboy hero was himself an Indian and could summon the powers of his spirit animals (which is another one that might not have aged well, but I loved it that the show embraced having a nonwhite hero, although he was played by a white actor, unlike Tonto).
@@@@@ 4: “and devaluing them by not only attributing their civilizations to aliens instead of their own capabilities,”
Well, “Who Mourns For Adonais” did do something quite similar with ancient Greece……
@@@@@10: “Sure, a Comanche could know Maya culture, and a Russian could consider Rome part of his heritage,”
In the case of Russia, there is that whole business about Moscow being the Third Rome…..
@@@@@10:” A white writer or viewer would automatically jump to the conclusion that a Native American would see every other Native American as part of his own culture, but that’s because “Native American” is a European construct subsuming what are actually many very distinct civilizations and traditions. So a member of one of those cultures would not automatically see another one of those cultures as “my heritage.””
I have encountered Amerind academics who think in pan-Amerind terms. And, yes, they freely acknowledge that they are using a post-Columbian epistēmē.
Krad:”But his secondary function is the same as that of Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov: it ain’t just white folks who have gone out into space.”
If you’re going to toss Chekov into the mix, that needs a bit of re-phrasing: “it ain’t just Western Europeans who have gone out into space.”
Walking Bear also appears in “Mind Sifter” in the fan produced series Star Trek New Voyages (Phase II). This episode was adapted from a short story that was written many years ago by Shirley Maiewski and was published in the anthology “Star Trek: The New Voyages” but in her original story Walking Bear did not appear.
@4/10/etc.: Where in this episode does Walking Bear actually say he’s drawing on his culture? You appear to be the one making the assumption that his Comance heritage has anything to do with it, notwithstanding that (as Keith pionted out) he explicitly says that he was a student of “many” ancient Earth people. Granted, he does add “especially my own” but that at most weakly implies that he thinks the current situation has anything to do with the current situation. You appear to be arguing against something that is not actually in the episode.
But even if he does have some sort of pan-Native American cultural identity, such a thing is eminently plausible. Right here in the real world, afrocentrism retrocatively inserts a Pan-African lens on to history that would have been completely alien to the actual participants. Also, whether something is “Scottish” or “Russian” is something often only determined in retrospect– again, Scotty and Chekov are presumably taking pride in their “heritage” without any consideration of whether their actual ancestors would have considered themselves Scottish/Russian or been part of whatever cultural heritage they’re taking pride in at the moment.
So, in my view, you’re arguing against something that isn’t actually in the episode, but to the extent that it is there is ample real-world and in-universe precedent to people actually thinking that way. So what’s the problem?
This episode frustrates me to no end. It was an incredibly cool idea for an episode. The alien’s design was greate and so was the reference to old American cultures, but the execution was a big mess.
For one thing, KuKulkan was nearly omnipotent when the plot required it, yet incredibly helpless when the plot required that. It made absolutely no sense.
And Walking Bear with his very rare expertise just happens to be on the bridge when KuKulkan appear. WTF? I liked the idea for the character (and I find it hilarious that the transcript site chakoteya lists his name as “Bear”) but it really broke my ability to suspend disbelief. The fact that he is very obviously voiced by Doohan didn’t help on that front either (and before somebody asks the expected question: no, usually it isn’t this obvious).
The similarities with “Who Mourns for Adonais” didn’t bother me, though. I don’t think the stories are that similar, other than the general “false gods” trope which was done to death in countless Trek episodes. But now that I do think about it, this comparision doesn’t really do the animated episode any favours.
“Who Mourns for Adonais” wasn’t a great episode by any means, but Apollo was a very coherent character. His behavior and goals was consistent from the first minute of the episode to the last. He was also played by an actor that managed the role very well (greek toga not withstanding).
Kukulkan, on the other hand… I couldn’t understand what he wants or why he does the things he does (or – in many cases – why he refrained from doing anything). They tried to explain his motives in the episode, but that explanation didn’t really jive with his actions on screen.
I suppose that just like Krad, I would have wanted to love this episode more than I really do. But unlike him, the actual episode left me with a very “Meh” feeling. Which is too bad, since TAS was – generally – quite a pleasant surprise to me.
@18/dunsel: “Where in this episode does Walking Bear actually say he’s drawing on his culture?”
It’s right there. First he says he’s a Comanche, then he implicitly refers to Maya and Aztec legends as part of his own history. Also, it’s kind of a non sequitur to go from “I am a Comanche” to “studied ancient Earth peoples,” because that implies that the Comanche are some ancient relic rather than a living, breathing culture. Heck, they’ve only existed as a distinct culture since about 1700, when they branched off from the Shoshone.
It’s the same problem I have with the episode’s premise that many ancient non-Western cultures just got their civilizations fed to them by Kukulkan at the same time, instead of developing their own distinct, original civilizations. It just mashes all those cultures together into one undifferentiated mass, and as a student of world history, I find that facile. Either have Walking Bear represent a specific culture, or have him be someone with a general interest in ancient cultures. Don’t treat those two like they’re the same thing, because they aren’t.
The problem, as I said, is not that it can’t plausibly happen, but that it seems like just one more example of the broader media/cultural pattern of lumping all Native American cultures into a homogeneous mass. You see the same thing with older portrayals of Asian cultures treating Chinese, Japanese, etc. as interchangeable — like racist caricatures of Chinese people saying “Ah, so” (which is Japanese) or flipping their L and R sounds (which is a misinterpretation of the Japanese consonant that’s midway between the two). Or like Jonny Quest‘s Hajji, a stereotyped Hindu character whose name is a Muslim honorific.
Okay, maybe this episode didn’t handle it quite as badly as other examples did, since there was an attempt to handwave it in dialogue — although, as I’ve said, I find it a clumsy attempt. Still, my problem with Walking Bear as a character is that he has no identity other than that of a token. He’s just randomly there instead of Sulu, and it’s only so that he can just happen to provide knowledge based on the fact that he’s a Native American. He has no other personality or attributes of any kind. And, as is usually the case with tokens, his presence as the sole Native American character requires him to stand for the entire category collectively. Except he’s not even that, because he’s generically an expert on all ancient cultures. He could’ve just been the new A-and-A officer, someone whose job it was to know history and anthropology, rather than someone defined by his race.
I get that the intent was to give representation to Native Americans. But I feel the episode has the opposite effect by subsuming Native American culture within a homogeneous mass of “ancient Earth cultures” in general.
@19/OThDPh: I agree with a lot of what you say. It’s awkward having Walking Bear and Arex working together when WB’s voice is so obviously just Arex’s voice in a lower register. Although I guess Doohan deserves credit for not giving him a stereotypical “Indian” accent.
And you’re right that Kukulkan is inconsistently portrayed. One minute he’s threatening to annihilate humanity if we don’t pass his test, then everyone’s all “Aww, he just wanted to help.” It’s like forgiving an abusive parent because he claims to mean well.
@5/FizzBen: Yes! It’s a kite! Together with the fireworks in “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” and the Starship balloon in “The Practical Joker”, this lends quite a festive touch to the show.
@4/Christopher: “and devaluing them by not only attributing their civilizations to aliens instead of their own capabilities”, @16/trajan23: ” ‘Who Mourns For Adonais’ did do something quite similar with ancient Greece” – And that’s why I don’t like the gods-were-really-aliens trope.
On the whole I prefer this episode to “Who Mours For Adonais?”, although that’s faint praise. They find Kukulkan by tracing a probe he sent instead of just stumbling over him. He isn’t humanoid. They talk about alien beings visiting Vulcan too. It also makes sense that an alien teacher would visit several different places on Earth and not stay with only one people. And I definitely prefer Walking Bear to Palamas. But I also have to agree with OmicronThetaDeltaPhi that the plot is a mess.
I like Walking Bear. I always like guest character crewmembers, because it makes the crew feel larger, and there haven’t been any since Anne Nored. And for all the problems Christopher pointed out, I agree with krad that it’s cool to see a Native American crewmember, and even better that he’s a Comanche and not a generic Hollywood Indian.
I also think that in-story, it’s plausible that he would identify with the Maya. When I travelled in Asia, I felt that people from other European countries like Italy or Sweden were “my people”. When I go to Italy or Sweden, it doesn’t feel that way. Walking Bear travels the galaxy with people from all over the world and even some alien planets. It makes sense to me that he would feel close to other Native American peoples while doing so.
As for Shatner mispronouncing “Kukulkan”, that’s more evidence for my theory that Kirk isn’t good with names.
The problem with using the term Native American, the way I see it, is that it completely misses out on the fact that there’s more to America than just US, Canada and Mexico. If you include Central America and South America, we’re going to have hundreds, if not thousands, of other tribes, all completely different from one another. You could get away with a simpler portrait of an indigenous culture back in 1974 (and given we’re talking about Saturday morning animation, that they got depicted at all was impressive). Of course, there is no way this would fly nowadays.
As for the episode, it’s a passable one. Competent, but unremarkable. The idea that humanity needs to prove to a higher being that it no longer needs to be helped or led is a very good one. But I feel Bates and Wise made the wrong call by using Adonais as a springboard. Feels too deritative.
Before ever seeing TAS, the first images I’ve ever saw from the show came from this episode. I still own a copy of The Art of Star Trek, written by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. The chapter on the Animated Series contains a few stills depicting Kukulkan. At the time, I thought he was a simple megalomaniacal villain. I was glad to at least be proven wrong when finally seeing the actual story.
As for Shatner mispronouncing “Kukulkan”, that’s more evidence for my theory that Kirk isn’t good with names.
@21/JanaJansen: Neither was Gary Mitchell, who was supposedly Kirk’s best friend and couldn’t even get his middle name on the tombstone right.
@21/Jana: I would’ve liked Walking Bear better if he’d just been there as a character whose ethnicity was incidental to his role in the plot, like Sulu and Uhura, rather than being “token Indian who only shows up when the white folks need a lecture on Indian history.” Imagine if Sulu had been a one-time guest character who had only appeared in “The Omega Glory” to give exposition about the Kohms.
I mean, Chakotay had a lot in common with Walking Bear — he prided himself on his Native heritage, he was an anthropologist and a spiritualist — but there was also more to him than that, like being a Maquis and clashing with Paris and (initially) having romantic tension with Janeway. As a one-shot character in a 22-minute episode, Walking Bear never got a chance to become anything more than a token.
Oh, and one other thing — if Kukulkan wanted to test the descendants of the cultures he’d given knowledge to — which seemed to be mostly Central America, Egypt, and China judging from the dialogue and designs — how come he took one Comanche and three Europeans whose surnames are all of Scottish origin? Shouldn’t the party of abductees have been more diverse? In the Foster adaptation, when Kukulkan is first identified, Uhura mentions an African legend of a winged snake named Myoka Mbowe, though I find zero hits for that name on Google outside of Memory Beta’s entry on the Foster adaptation. It would’ve made more sense if Uhura had been one of the abductees instead of Scott, who really didn’t contribute anything.
By the way, Walking Bear’s first name of Dawson must come from the script, since it’s never spoken in the episode. It’s given in the Star Trek Concordance, but if Foster used it, I didn’t find it in my skim of the adaptation.
Oh, one more thing — McCoy’s patient at the moment of his abduction is the first male yeoman we ever saw in onscreen Trek. The only other male yeoman we ever saw was Burke in The Undiscovered Country (and possibly his partner in crime Samno). Although Captain Pike’s yeoman who was killed on Rigel VII prior to “The Cage” was male. Foster’s adaptation identifies McCoy’s patient as a security specialist named Jo van Dreenan (still male) rather than a yeoman.
@22/Eduardo: Very true about Gary Mitchell :)
@23/Christopher: “I would’ve liked Walking Bear better if he’d just been there as a character whose ethnicity was incidental to his role in the plot” – Yes, I would have preferred that too. But I appreciate that he’s there at all. Too many crewmembers are white and have British names.
“[…] how come he took one Comanche and three Europeans whose surnames are all of Scottish origin?” – Hmm, don’t you think that all humans look the same to him?
@24/Jana: But really, what in-story reason did Kukulkan have to choose either McCoy or Scott? Kirk was the captain. Walking Bear was the one who knew Kukulkan’s name. So those made sense. The other two were just chosen because they were main-cast regulars.
@25/Christopher: Perhaps he picked everyone Kirk had recently talked to, except for Spock because he isn’t human.
@26/Jana: If it had been the previous three humans Kirk had talked to (excluding both Spock and Arex), then it would be McCoy, Walking Bear, and Uhura in that order. Although he doesn’t talk to Uhura until after the other three have been beamed away, so you could be right if Kukulkan made the choices before he started the abductions.
What am I saying? Of course Kukulkan had to have chosen to abduct Scotty and McCoy before he actually did it! Duh! Sorry, brain hiccup.
Oh, by the way, I keep forgetting to talk about David Wise. I’ve read that he was a veteran animation writer brought in to help Russell Bates with his script, but this is actually his first writing credit on IMDb. Anyway, he’d go on to have a long animation career after this. He’s best known as the developer and head writer of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series. He also worked on other Filmation series like Isis, Space Sentinels, Tarzan, and He-Man; Hanna-Barbera’s Godzilla; other animated shows like Transformers, Chip ‘n’ Dale’s Rescue, Rangers, Defenders of the Earth, and Batman: The Animated Series (for which he wrote “The Clock King,” “If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?,” and the story for “The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne”).
My apologies if this shows up more than once; the posting engine seems to be acting up.
#27: Unfortunately, my library is presently living in a great many boxes following a recent move, so I can’t supply a lot of detail, but I can confirm that “Dawson” comes from Bates’ and Wise’s script. There’s some discussion of the development of “Serpent’s Tooth”, and of Walking Bear in particular, in the Marshak/Culbreath print anthology Star Trek: The New Voyages 2, to which Bates contributed a script-format story called “The Patient Parasites” that he’d pitched unsuccessfully to Dorothy Fontana.
/pause, Google/
Aha. And it turns out that there’s an online narrative from Bates himself that expands on the story introduction I remember from New Voyages 2, talking about both “Parasites” and “Serpent’s Tooth”.
Unfortunately, that letter shows some of the difficulties of working with “Native American” mythology, even by those of native descent. As a non-Native student of parts of that mythology myself (I am most familiar with Pacific Northwest cultures), I would tend to disagree with Bates’ view that the Thunderbird figure in most North American traditions is equivalent to the “feathered serpent” deities of the Aztec and Maya. Most (not all) of the stories I have seen portray Thunderbird as a pure elemental being who does not interact with the human world. Quetzalcoatl and Kukulkan correspond more closely to the traditions in which Coyote or Raven act as “Changer” in addition to their traditional roles as Tricksters, preparing the world for the creation and nurturing of human beings.
Aside to #22: You’re right that “Native American” isn’t a wholly satisfying general term, but it’s the one that was in widest scholarly use during the period when this episode was being made. There still isn’t a particularly good general label for the North American indigenous cultures. “Indian” by itself is no longer popular both because it perpetuates Columbus’ original error and because there are now enough Indians-from-the-original-India living in America to confuse matters. “American Indian” isn’t much better, and the shorthand “Amerind” never really caught on. Of late I have been hearing and reading “First Peoples” used among members of the cultures themselves — I think that phrase originated in Canada and has been drifting south — but that’s not very specific geographically, and I suspect it may be technically inaccurate (or at least misleading) in some particular situations. In general, it’s almost always best to use a specific cultural affiliation (Kiowa, Iroquois, Yakama) if you know it. Ten years ago I’d have said none of the locals my family knew would have minded “Indian” used generally, but there’s been enough generational change and scholarly evolution here in the Northwest that I don’t honestly know what the current preferences are.
28. John C. Bunnell – In Canada the term used is First Nations, taken from The Assembly of First Nations.
“The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) is an assembly, modelled on the United Nations General Assembly, of First Nations (Indian bands) represented by their chiefs. It emerged from and replaced the Canadian National Indian Brotherhood in the early 1980s. The aims of the organization are to protect and advance the aboriginal and treaty rights and interests of First Nations in Canada, including health, education, culture and language.
Assembly of First Nations“
Sure, having Kukulkan serve as the source of various cultural aspects of early civilizations in the Americas (and elsewhere) seems to take away from their individuality. However, the Greek and Roman pantheons did much the same with Apollo and his band of merry gods. Look at how much they have influenced culture even today. The names of the planets, the months of the calendars and so on. if Kukulkan lessened the impact of the native cultures in the Americas, then Apollo and his bunch did the same or more to European societies.
And let’s not forget that the Platonians were messing around on ancient Earth as well. When you start to think of it, Earth was a busy little place way back when. Lots of folks stopped by and meddled or kidnapped some folks or just hung around and then wandered off.
At least Walking Bear got a name and some dialog. How many other natives have we seen in Trek? Chakotay with his made up background. The folks in the disputed area between the Feds and the Caries in Journey’s End. And a couple in TMP who were just in the crowd scene and then never seen on screen again. Given that track record, I’ll cut Walking Bear some slack, especially since he’s one character in a 22 minute cartoon.
That said, it’s nice to see an Earth culture that isn’t basically mid 20th century America. And that’s as in US of A. Apparently Earth is fairly: homogeneous in the future. It’s nice to see someone who doesn’t fit into the pigeon hole.
The ship, both before and after it’s change in appearance, is interesting. I’m reminded of the Fesarius. A powerful ship with a crew of exactly one. Kukulkan didn’t seem to have too much trouble with the Enterprise, at least at first. I wonder if there wee originally more crew or if each member of his species had their own ship when they went exploring.
Ranks an above average – 6/10, maybe a 7 if I’m feeling generous.
To everyone that’s saying that “at least Walking Bear exists, and he speaks, and he doesn’t have a clichéd Native American accent” despite him being a magical repository of all Native American knowledge; well, that’s what MeredithP referred to as “compensatory representation” in comment #13.
@22 – Eduardo: This kind of stuff still flies today. It’s starting to fade away, but Hollywood still treats “Hispanics” as a grab-bag, as just “different kinds of Mexicans”. Just look at any show which has an episode set in a Latin American country, or with a large number of characters from a certain Latin American origin. For example, a SHIELD episode last season, or the previous one, when they went to Colombia (don’t get me started on people pronouncing or writing it “Columbia)” and meet Yo-Yo. You have a dozen or so “Colombians” with speaking roles, but many don’t speak Spanish like natives, and even those who speak Spanish properly have wildly different accents (there are different accents within one country, but some don’t even sound Colombian at all.
It even happens in that kind of episode with characters who are related to each other, parents and children who would most likely have the same exact accents, and they don’t.
And don’t get me started on the fact that most of the time they believe that absolutely no one who is not a WASP American can speak English without wacky accents, or not insert “AY DIOS MIO!” catchphrases every five English words.
It’s getting better, though, but it still happens.
@27 – Chris: I knew Wise’s name form TMNT, but that’s quite a resumé he has.
@28 – John: In my country, Uruguay, and in some other South American countries, we use “pueblos originarios”, which could be translated into “indigenous peoples”. “Aboriginal peoples” could be used in English, but I think that is usually associated with Australian aboriginal peoples.
@29 – kkozoriz: I know they’re not real people, but referring to Cardassians by a slur like “Cardies” isn’t cool.
@28 – John: Thanks for the link to that letter, it’s very interesting, and heartwarming. I do find it funny that Bates’ way to vindicate non-European civilizations was to make every civilization on Earth idiots who needed alien help.
Magnus,
Check out the representation of, say,Italian-Americans in the media. The media, at least in the US, aren’t just biased against non-white minorities, they are biased against whites with ancestries from outside the British Isles. Name one Trek character from the Balkans, Southern Europe, Germany, Scandanavia, the Mediterranean littoral, …
@32/emc: Southern Europe: Giotto. Rizzo. D’Amato. Carolyn Palamas, if she’s indeed supposed to be Greek. Germany: Karl Jaeger. Mark Piper could also be a German name. But yeah, they’re few and far between.
I don’t think that was what MaGnUs’ criticism was about, though.
#32/33: There are fallacies (and really excessive generalizations) on both sides of that framework.
First, “the US media” as a whole is too broad a classification to be meaningful — that phrasing takes in news organizations (large and small, national and regional), TV production companies, musicians, theater companies, SF/F genre publishers, a sizeable chunk of Internet businesses, and more. The assertion of such a general bias on such a broad scale without any sort of support lacks credibility, especially when countered by specific datapoints — for example, if it were true that ABC News was biased in such a way, they would hardly employ George Stephanopoulos in such a high-level capacity.
Second, it’s hard to accurately track the jump from general to specific in the “name one Trek character from X” challenge, not least because that challenge too is so broadly framed. As posted, that challenge could be refuted by looking to characters from any Paramount-originated source — episodes from any of the TV series, any of the dozens of different comic book series issued over time, any of the hundreds of novels, any official role-playing game whether paper-and-pencil or computerized, and so forth. In fact, it’s more easily refuted than might be supposed; if one doesn’t accept Jean-Luc Picard as French — thus, clearly not from the British Isles — then there’s still Admiral Alynna Nechayev, whose name is of Slavic extraction and who’s played by an actress of Slavic descent.
And yet…that last statement, and the quick run-through of a number of minor characters known purely by last name, can also be characterized as sloppy thinking — because by the 22nd and 23rd centuries, it’s highly likely that the association between ethnic identity and personal surname will be even more blurred than it is now. Even today, one can find Irish-surnamed individuals who identify culturally as Native American, people with Asian surnames who appear to be of Western origin, and so forth. For all we know, crewman Giotto grew up in Japan and D’Amato was raised by Inuit parents. Even in the real world, my own brother gave my niece and nephew ethnic Welsh first names even though there’s no Welsh background anywhere in our actual family tree — and Mother did enough genealogy that we actually know that.
@34/John C. Bunnell: Or they could be from the Martian Colonies, or Alpha Centauri, or Deneva, or thousands of other places. That’s why I prefer to complain about “too many characters with British names”. I just assumed that was what emc actually meant.
In the real world, I’m German, and my eldest daughter’s first name is Finnish. We have Finnish friends and simply liked the name.
Jana: similarly, I have the first name Keith, which is Gaelic in origin, solely because my mother likes the name. My heritage is entirely Italian, and it was amusing to visit family in Italy when I was a kid because they couldn’t pronounce my first name — there is no “th” sound in Italian. To them, I was “Keet.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@JanaJensen, @John C. Bunnell:
I was referring to US media-produced fiction, particularly TV and movies. Non-fiction media has it’s own issues, such as separating pure lies alt-facts from fact.
Not to shovel shit on the memory of DC Fontana, but isn’t it kind of racist to reject all of a guy’s story pitches and then tell him to write something more steeped in his heritage? Like if Roddenberry had turned down The Infinite Vulcan and then instructed Walter Koenig to come back when he had something “more Jewish.” Further proof of how much more we understand these days. I’m sure Fontana felt she was nurturing Bates and furthering the show’s philosophy. But it was probably pretty uncomfortable to be on the other side of that conversation.
Okay, so I just read Bates’ own account, and it seems the series of events was a bit more complicated. And that Fontana’s patronage of him and his ethnic identity was a bit more nuanced than a simple, tossed-off edict to write something you Indian fellers know about. Whew.
@39/Steve: It sounds similar to the kind of initiatives the TV industry has today to recruit and train more diverse writers, producers, and directors — they recognize that they can’t write diverse characters more authentically unless they get authentic voices involved in the creative process. I get the sense that the lack of such initiatives in the movie industry is part of the reason Hollywood movies are still so whitewashed.
@32 – emc: I was talking about media in general; Hollywood in particular, not just Trek. You have countless examples of characters with Italian, Scandinavian, German, or Polish last names that are just “regular Americans”, who are perfectly capable of speaking flawless, accentless English. Meanwhile, there are considerable less characters of Hispanic descent that do not have an accent.
That’s what I was going about.
@36 – krad: That’s a lot better than many people in my country pronouncing Keith (as in Richards) as “Kate”, because “Keit” is read exactly like that. Also, most people, even his own fans, say “Stiffen” King.
@41/MaGnUs: I think we’re seeing more Hispanic characters these days who only have accents when speaking Spanish. The first example that comes to mind was Natalie Martinez’s lead character in FOX’s just-ended APB midseason series, a Cuban-American Chicago cop named Theresa Murphy (married name) who spoke with little to no accent as a rule, but who spoke fluent Spanish at home with her mother and son. The regular show in that same time slot, Lucifer, has three Hispanic regulars who speak English without accents — Kevin Alejandro as Dan Espinoza, Scarlett Estevez as his daughter Trixie, and Aimee Garcia as Ella Lopez. There was Jessica Camacho on Sleepy Hollow last season. There’s Carlos Valdes as Cisco on The Flash, of course. Then there’s Riverdale, with Camila Mendes as Veronica Lodge and Marisol Nichols as her mother Hermione; both Lodge women speak accent-less English but occasionally drop into Spanish — not in the stereotyped way of tossing in random Spanish palabras for no reason, but usually to each other at home, or that sort of thing. I see plenty of Latin-American actors these days playing Latin-American characters who speak accent-less American English.
Indeed, I can’t even remember the character now, but there was one instance that I found kind of striking, because the character would go along speaking English in a regular American accent until he (she?) mentioned the name of a Hispanic character and pronounced it in a strong Spanish accent. It was just such a casual change from one to the other. I wish I could remember who that was.
And “Stiffen King” sounds like a porn name…
Christopher: An example of what you say in your penultimate paragraph would be the character of A.D.A. Barba in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, played by Raul Esparza.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@43/krad: That can’t be it, since that’s the one L&O show I hardly ever watched. (Though I did see Esparza live on stage over a decade ago when he starred in the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park’s revival of Sondheim’s Company.)
@42 – Chris: We certainly are, and I’ve mentioned in other threads and this one. I’m grateful for that. Thanks for mentioning those shows, I don’t watch some of them. Riverdale and The Flash are perfect in that respect, and I also remember Morgan Martinez from Chuck some years ago. Also, as a white Hispanic (help, I’m being opressed! :p), I like that we have more and more of those on TV these days. Why, I once saw a red-haired Hispanic character on TV!
And that character you mention sounds great, when I’m speaking to other English speakers and have to pronounce Spanish names, I try not to be jarring, but I still pronounce them correctly. People will continuously mispronounce my name and last name, and I’ll just smile and nod along, because it’s a very minir thing… but you will never hear me pronouncing it without following the actual pronounciation.
That said, you can (if you’re a native speaker or a suficciently proficient speaker of both languages) use the correct pronounciation of things without dropping the general inflection the language you’re speaking at the moment has. Particularly between two languages with such different sounds as Spanish and English have.
It’s the same in Spanish/English. It sounds positively ridiculous to talk in Spanish with other Spanish native speakers and turn on the English inflections to pronounce “New York” or “Christopher”. Don’t know if I’m making any sense here.
Stiffen King does sound porny.
@45/MaGnUs: I usually try to pronounce foreign names correctly insofar as I’m able to, though my accent probably stinks in most cases. I’m intrigued by other languages, even though I’m not very good at learning them. Spanish is the only one I can more or less follow if written down or spoken slowly, but that’s because I took 3 years of it in high school. Although I took enough Japanese in college (and have seen enough kaiju movies and anime) to have a pretty good grasp of its pronunciation. (The sounds have always been the easy part for me — vocabulary and grammar not so much.)
Just watched my DVD copy again — Overhead shot of the bridge during the first hit from Kukulkan’s ship. Uhura sprawls in her chair and her skin turns a very light peach. But she’s back to herself again in time for Spock to dis her.
Okay, problem one, Mayan and Aztec traditions are no more the native culture of a Kiowa or a Comanche then they are mine. This habit of lumping all Native American nations together is quite annoying.
Problem two, why not make Walking Bear a Maya? The Comanche happen to be my favorite Plains tribe and there’s no reason why a member of same might not be interested in Ancient American cultures but why not a Maya???
@48/Roxana: It makes sense to me that a Native American among non-Native Americans would identify with the Maya. As I said in comment #21, I had a similar feeling during my travels.
Why not make Walking Bear a Maya? – I don’t know, but perhaps Russell Bates felt that he didn’t know enough about the Maya. Also, my history teacher told us in 1980 that the Maya were extinct. I learned that this wasn’t true by doing some additional reading, but perhaps it was what many people believed in the 70s.
I know that the Charrúa (a native tribe from my country, Uruguay) were said to be extinct, because the government basically exterminated them in the 1830s; and that was what we were taught in school in the 80s and 90s (and before). Nowadays, we know that while they were pretty much massacred, quite a few survived, and there are many of their descendants among us. Some of them also work with anthropologists to try and preserve and reconstruct what little of their culture they could salvage.
@3 – MeredithP: We’ve seen now that the DIS writers remember TAS exists…
@38 D.C. Fontana is still alive!
#48: I remember watching this when it first aired, and then went back and rewatched last night (thank you, CBS All Access!). I was very much interested in ancient civilizations when I was that age — Aztec, Maya, Egyptian, Inca — and like Jana @@@@@ #49, I’d thought that the Maya were extinct back then, so it seems likely that Russell Bates and David Wise would have thought so as well.
Then, too, there may be a distinction worth making here between physical and cultural ethnicity. I don’t doubt that there are individuals alive today who can trace their ancestry back to Mayan roots, just as there are populations here in the Pacific Northwest who can trace their ancestry back to a variety of pre-contact native tribal cultures. However, my understanding of the cultural context is that there is no surviving cultural connection between modern Mayans and the ancient builders of the pyramids, players of the sacrificial ball games, and worshippers of Kukulkan and the other deities honored by the ancient Maya. That chain of memory has been broken, interrupted, or at least very greatly weakened in the intervening centuries. (Looking again at the Pacific Northwest tribes, with whose cultures I’m a bit more familiar, some have weathered the generations better than others, but an immense amount of cultural memory was lost in the century or so following contact with Western culture, partly due to severe population reduction caused by epidemic diseases, and partly due to certain generations being much more inclined to assimilate to “white” culture than to preserve the knowledge of such few of their elders as had survived the disease years. Current populations are making significant efforts to recapture older cultural knowledge — like MaGnUs’ Charrúa — but it’s a difficult process. And in some cases, what’s coming out of it is wholly new cultural content — notably written versions of languages that had existed only in spoken form prior to Western contact.)
What struck me most about the ending as I rewatched the episode is that — as Bates himself mentions in the letter I linked upstream — it does a little too well at echoing the TOS episode “Who Mourns for Adonis?”. The Kukulkan we meet here ultimately admits that he doesn’t need worship so much as pure social contact…and yet Kirk and company let him go off into the outer darkness without offering him a chance to become part of the Federation community, sharing his technology and forming new friendships. In this respect he’s very different from the TOS “Adonis” character, yet he’s condemned to the same fate.
Ah, well; perhaps someone will do a novel one of these years in which we get to see Kukulkan again….
Yeah, after all, it’s Kukulkan, not Kukulkan’t. :)
research-the character was originally Kiowa but settler colonist said “who?!?” And gave the character a tribe that was identifiable. Bates achieved an accreditation Sesame Dtreet could not and main stream has not, a National be American character. Dominant culture in deep space is as much an asswipe as in everyday life. Simple appreciative for what it is diversity and depth that had not previously made it to screen. What the hell a Klingon is more “imaginatively palatable” than a Kiowa. Who travelled from the far North to the depths of South America- Nomads unparalleled. Perspective to the timing this was released 44 years ago. I applaud Bates. Then again we knew the author. He travelled across more than deep space to bring this to the screen and give this franchise this level of recognition- He took native literature to the moon and back.
I’m totally unclear what comment #55 has to do with “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth”………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Comment @55 removed. See our commenting guidelines for further information.
@Magnus and all.
As an Italian American (well about half anyways) I honestly don’t give a crap about how my culture is portrayed in the media. I also don’t understand the obsession’s many people have with “connecting with their heritage” In my experience the more one learns about one heritage the more there is to hate about oneself. To be fair my other half is German-American. I remember learning about my nationalities (am I using that term right?) as a kid. My first thought was “two of the three bad guys in WWII.” Then I shrugged and moved on. But in age where EVERYONE is obsessed with their heritage rather thinking of it as just an interesting thing about themselves, or a something that gives them an identify and moving on, I can recall jumping on the bandwagon and trying to find something to be proud of only to learn instead that there’s isn’t SOMETHING about your heritage that WON”T inspire disgust either from yourself, others, or both. After spending WAY to much time obsessing over this fact, I went back to treating it how I had been. As something interesting to know and move on. It causes WAY less headaches that way.